When revenues are balanced against costs shale oil and gas development has been a plus for public finances across the county, a Duke University study finds.

In Colorado, the study — by the Duke Energy Initiative — found a positive fiscal impact in major oil and gas counties and municipalities – with the exception of Rio Blanco County, where road repair costs were high.

Colorado wind power continued to soar in 2013, but may flag this year according to facts and figures in American Wind Energy Association’s annual market report.

AWEA, the industry’s main trade group, pronounced 2013 a good year with 61,110 megawatts operating in the U.S. across 46,100 wind turbines in 39 states and Puerto Rico. The 905 utility-scale wind projects operating can power the equivalent of 15.5 million American homes.

And here are some of the Colorado highlights:

• 2,332 Megawatts of Installed Wind Capacity

• 1,530 Total Number of Wind Turbines

• 7,382 Megawatt Hours of Wind Generation

• 13.8 Percent of the States Generation Capacity Coming from Wind

• 681,000 Homes Powered by Wind

• 4,370,000 Metric Tons of CO2 Emissions Avoided Due to Wind Energy Production

In total energy consumption per capita, Colorado ranked 34th among the states using 294 million British Thermal Units per person. A BTU is the energy needed to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. Wyoming was number one in energy consumption with 975 million BTUs per capita and Rhode Island was 50th using 175 million BTUs per capita. With 5.1 million people, Colorado is the 22nd most populous state.

Residential natural gas prices in Colorado were 30 percent cheaper than the national average in October 2013. Residential electricity rates were 5 percent below the national average and commercial rates were 2.9 percent lower than the national average. Industrial electricity rates, however, were 3.53 percent higher than the national average.

More than 17,000 acres were swamped in the Colorado floods that swept through the Denver-Julesburg Basin — one of the most intensively drilled fields in the U.S. — leaving oils spills dotting the area.

In the basin, there are 20,500 active wells in Weld County, 321 in Boulder County, 253 in Larimer County.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has listed 11 oil spills and its aerial survey has found two dozen tanks overturned. By Saturday state inspectors had assessed 35 percent of the affected area and the Commission is still compiling data on flood impacts,.

As of Sept. 23 the commission said it is tracking eight “notable releases” and 10 additional locations with small releases. The commission has tallied 33 sites with damaged tanks or equipment, but no indication of leaks.

The commission calculates it has documented oil spills totaling about 27,000 gallon and of the 1,900 wells that were shut-in during the peak of the flooding, 600 are back in operation.Read more…

While that might seem confounding it all has to do with the type and price of energy used in Colorado, according to an analysis by the federal Energy Information Administration based on its 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey

Colorado households consume 103 million British thermal units of energy a year. (A Btu is the amount of energy it takes to heat one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.) The bill: a little more than $1,500 a year.

“Since the weather in Colorado is cooler than other areas of the United States, space heating accounts for more than half of household energy use,” the analysis says.Read more…

“The numbers aren’t good news or bad news,” said Paul Denhom, one of the study’s authors. “It’s just that there was not an understanding of actual land-use requirements before this work.”

The amount of land needed varied by technology with the total area needed ranging, based on generating capacity, from 2.8 acres per gigawatt-hour per year for a photovoltaic panel install that follows the sun to 5.3 acres acres for a Dish Stirling concentrating solar unit, which uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s heat.Read more…

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Gov. John Hickenlooper made a strong defense of fracking and horizontal drilling on environmental grounds before the Denver Association of Business Economists Wednesday.

“Inexpensive natural gas has reduced our carbon emissions by a level no one is talking about,” he said. “If you are concerned about climate change in real time, inexpensive natural gas has been remarkably powerful.”

Although the U.S. did not sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global carbon emissions, the country has reduced its carbon output by more than the rest of the world combined and is now halfway to the reductions called for under the plan, he said.

Per capita carbon emission levels in the United States are down to Eisenhower era levels, he said.

Oil and gas industry executives have lamented that the Department of Interior’s effort to overhaul the program to leasing and drilling on federal land has stifled leasing and production.

They have point to falling numbers of new leases and leased acreage and a decline in drilling activity. Supporters of the rule revisions – which require more planning and public comment – counter that the weak numbers of more a result of a weak economy and weak natural gas prices which on the New York Mercantile Exchange has fallen 63 percent since September 2008 from $7.93 to less than $3 for a million British Thermal Units today.

Environmental groups, such as the Wilderness Society, have argued that the industry has plenty of leases which it is failing to exploit.

The 2011 statistics released today by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency which oversees federal oil and gas leasing paints mixed picture of oil and gas on-shore leasing that doesn’t quite fit either sides’ contention.

For Colorado the biggest news is that both oil and gas production was up on federal lands – oil production rising 30 percent to 4.95 million barrels and natural gas was up 13 percent 317 million cubic feet of gas.Read more…

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The Romney campaign Monday announced a 50-person Colorado energy advisory committee with a heavy tilt toward the mining and oil and gas industries.

The committee, a statement said, would advise Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and “out reach to various sectors of the energy industry in Colorado including coal, mineral, wind, renewable and oil and gas industries.”

Still, all but six members of the group were associated with mining and drilling industries or former Republican officials.

Leading the list – he was really the first name – is former Republican Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, who sits on the boards of Key Energy and the Bill Barrett Corp.

Just behind Owens was Gale Norton, the Interior Secretary in the George W. Bush administration and now a counsel for Royal Dutch Shell Oil.

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.